What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks? • Hacker News Board

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#91

Post by nostrademons » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #55

Sorry, I don't trust this guy. It was just explained how he uses social media to manipulate the story he tells. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/an-unexpected-victor...

This is communication 101. If you start internalizing that form of storytelling, you'll see it everywhere - literally all of our public discourse has this structure, from the Build Back Better plan to "Immigrants are taking our jobs" to "Flatten the curve" to the right-wing school-board stuff to fluff pieces on local restaurants to top-ranked HN comments. It's so prevalent because it works - it taps into fundamental cognitive & emotional biases that humans hold, so the ideas that spread are the ones expressed in that form.

If you want to be rational about this, judge the plan (and this one too) on its own merits rather than on the fact you're being manipulated. You're being manipulated - you are always being manipulated, every time someone communicates with you, and you can't escape that. It's good to understand how, but then your job is to tease out the rhetoric and understand the underlying proposal enough to judge it on its own merits.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#92

Post by snowwrestler » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

Mandating a lower-than-maximum container stacking height was itself a buffer, which is now being filled by temporarily stacking higher.

The idea that we run without buffers in the supply chain is contradicted by his own big idea to use one of them.

We don’t have big warehouses full of inventory sitting around like we used to, true. But we do have the money we generated by running more efficient supply chains, and money is more flexible than outdated inventory.

Edit to add: whether that money is sitting with founders, shareholders, or employees is largely irrelevant from a macro perspective.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#93

Post by JPKab » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

evilotto wrote: post #33

He's right to point out that the obsession with RoE is a big part of the problem. He's wrong to suggest that the billionaire class and founders will solve the problem if we only trust them and let them keep their money. Founders have just as much incentive to optimize the excess out of the system, they just call it "disruptive innovation" by which they mean tweaking how the system works so that they can squeeze out p…

The obsession with RoE is really just a major form of efficiency. Having things sitting around unused is a huge reason that US car companies got their asses handed to them by Toyota and their TQM/LEAN system they developed.

People writing articles like this forget that it's not just Wall Street, but competitors who created the huge pressures for adopting JIT inventory systems. There's also the consumer. Are you willing to spend the additional money required to buy a car from a company who wastes tons of $ on excess inventory?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#94

Post by jshen » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

Absolutely shocked that a founder of a new company believes that founder led companies are the simplistic solution to our complex problems.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#95

Post by BoiledCabbage » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

justinator wrote: post #55

Sorry, I don't trust this guy. It was just explained how he uses social media to manipulate the story he tells. https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/an-unexpected-victor...

Seriously, it's looking like he pretty quickly is looking to start an influence/propaganda channel.

Following the exact same playbook. A bunch of easily agreeable "Rah, Rah bad Wall st. Short term over long term bad" to get everyone nodding, then an incredible leap to push his actual argument.

This guy is falling very quickly from "interesting how he got that thread picked up everywhere", to "somethings fishy here".

The logic presented is "The cause for the port slowdown is a future policy proposal I want people to oppose."

Obviously he isn't literally saying that, but that's the logic path he walks the reader down.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#96

Post by FeepingCreature » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

whatever1 wrote: post #56

flurie wrote: post #45

The buried lede is an assertion that a tax on unrealized capital gains will cause reduced private ownership of large companies, resulting in a reduced ability to handle 100-year flood events. Along the way, there are a bunch of other assertions that serve as prerequisites, like the idea that these companies can cultivate better employee loyalty and plan for longer horizons. How much do we know about how true that is,…

“cause reduced private ownership of large companies, resulting in a reduced ability to handle 100-year flood events.” How the market speculation on the value of a company can affect its resiliency ? If tomorrow everyone sold Apple stock for 1 cent, why would Apple the company care ? Same revenue, same costs. Give me a break with the importance of the stock casino.

It would impact Apple's ability to raise money on the stock market tho.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#97

Post by jollybean » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

It's fallacious to suggest that 10% capacity everywhere would have abnegated the supply chain issues.

That said, shipping in particular is problematic in how they externalize costs. They can get away with shenanigans because they use international loopholes etc..

I say we need to dump this 'flagging in exotic country ABC' and require that any ship landing in country ABC has to abide by all the regulations of ABC.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#98

Post by joe_the_user » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

cmenge wrote: post #11

Hm, seems like a monocausal 'explanation' of a complex problem - or let's say a mere opinion with little background information. Given the 'hundred year crisis', I think we have fared relatively well from a purely economic point of view... So, yes, some problems may exist but I think we have witnessed a surprisingly resilient system, given how optimized everything is and how unprecedented the issue is. I don't know i…

Keeping tons of spare capacity is neither economical nor environmentally friendly. Also, it would probably only shift the problem elsewhere.

* There some things that are people simply need for survival. At a certain point, having no spare capacity and cascading failures means people die. Lack of masks last arguably killed people last year.

* It's quite possible to excess capacity and be good to the environment while present production is often terrible despite the lack of excess capacity.

* Sure, a complete lack of excess capacity is economical. Which is the OP's point in different words. Robustness to failure has been traded for immediate returns.

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#99

Post by kilna » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

cmenge wrote: post #82

mfer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know if a slight price increase in graphics cards is the key issue to worry about at this point. The price increase in graphics cards isn't related to this. GMs trouble selling cars because they don't have enough chips to finish off the cars is a problem related to the pandemic and planning like the posts on Twitter note. The lack of new cars available has driven up prices on used cars. This is all supply c…

> The US has now outsourced most of the production of goods to places in other countries. I think that is the point (or one of the points): it's not just logistics and spare capacity - it's a much more complex set of issues. This isn't something accounting practices or "less greed" would solve, as seems to be implied in the Twitter thread. Would you have voted for a party that spent $1b annually on mask manufacturing…

> This isn't something accounting practices or "less greed" would solve

Are you seriously trying to say that production being moved to China, et al. is not because of greed generally, and ROE specifically?

Re: What caused all the supply chain bottlenecks?

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet » Thu, Oct 28, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

rajin444 wrote: post #40

_Algernon_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you forgotten the state of Italy and New York (among others) at the start and middle of 2020? There were literal trucks full of dead bodies in the streets because they couldn't be buried fast enough. How do you envision the time between march 2020 and the point where herd immunity through vaccines / infection would have been sufficient would have gone without a lockdown? I'll take a lack of a few non-essential l…

I'm not familiar with Italy, but NY was sending elderly patients back to nursing homes when they had covid. https://apnews.com/article/new-york-andrew-cuomo-us-news-cor...

Which was insanely, criminally stupid, and absolutely contributed to a lot of deaths.

But New York also has a subway system that (approximately) everyone uses to get around. That turned out to be a perfect spreading ground for a respiratory virus. If I understand correctly, that's a big part of why New York got hit so hard. You can't just pin it on Cuomo's criminal irresponsibility.